So the time has come to drop some weight, and I gotta tell you I couldn’t be more ready or excited!

It’s been a long 18 months of bulking and my body and my mind are ready for a new challenge. The bulk was a success, as I slowly added muscle, weight, and strength. My calories climbed up to anywhere between 2,800 and 3,000 on a daily basis to match my training load over time.

And now… Now I’m ready to scale those calories back and really focus on a new goal for the next three months. Believe it or not (and I know people roll their eyes when I say this) force feeding yourself every day can get exhausting. There were a lot of times I wasn’t hungry and didn’t want to eat, but I forced food in to make sure I was hitting my numbers each day.

Both mentally and physically, I’m excited to change things up for a bit.

So, the plan is to diet for the next three months. My target is to lose about 20 pounds over that time span, which I’ve done before. However, I’d like to do things a little differently this time around. Check out my article on my new approach to training for all the details on how I believe this cut will be different.

In this article, I’m going to dive deep into my dieting strategy over the next three months. A lot of this information is based on my overall dieting framework, which you can find in my Dieting Guide E-Book.

My Diet Starting Point

Knowing that my calories were between 2,800 and 3,000 at the end of my bulk, I’d like to make a rather dramatic drop to start this weight-loss process. Given that, I’m shooting for 2,400 calories a day to start my diet.

What will that consist of? Honestly, I’m not changing much about the types of food I’ll eat. More so, I’ll change the quantities in which I eat that food.

I happen to think I eat pretty clean on a regular basis. Most of my meals consist of white rice mixed with chicken or steak and cheese. I often add fruits or veggies to those meals as well for healthy sources of carbohydrates and to add fiber to my diet.

So I’ve got an overall calorie goal each day (2,400). What makes up those calories?

Generally speaking, I’m most concerned about hitting my daily protein and then staying within the 2,400-calorie allotment. I wrote in a recent article about how a simple strategy to losing weight is simply hitting your protein and calories each day, and it’s exactly what I’ll be utilizing for this cut.

More specifically, though, I will have carbohydrate and fat goals for each day. Here is the overall desired macronutrient breakdown I’m shooting for on a daily basis…

• Protein: 200 grams
• Fat: 60 grams
• Carbohydrate: 265 grams

If I’m in or around those numbers, I’ll be providing my body with the right kind of fuel for my training sessions. I’ll also be in a caloric deficit, so weight loss should progress in the early going.

But what about the future? The long term?

My Diet Adjustments

This is a little tricky, since I don’t know when I’ll make adjustments or how my body will be reacting when that time comes.

However, it’s safe to say there will be some basic adjustments I’ll eventually make.

To put it simply, calories will be reduced. But you already knew that. More specifically, calories will be reduced via a reduction of fats and carbohydrates.

In the early going, I’ll cut carbohydrates when I need to reduce calories. My current fat goal is 60 grams, which accounts for 22.5 percent of my overall calories. I like to have fats stay within 15-25 percent of my total calories, so there’s less wiggle room there. Carbohydrates are the easy choice early on.

In terms of protein, that number will never change. I’ll remain at 200 grams of protein. The only thing that could happen to that number would be that it goes up, but I honestly don’t see that happening. When dieting down, I like to consume a little more than one gram per pound of body weight in protein, and that’s exactly what we have here.

Additional dieting strategies like programming “refeeds” and such may come into the equation as well, but we’ll address that if/when the time comes.

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So, that’s about it for the diet. I’m basing the early stages of this thing on a few basic principles, and things will get more detailed as the diet progresses.

I hope this provided you with some insight or value, as I know dieting and weight loss are hot topics this time of year. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask! I’m always happy to help.

Thanks!

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CG